Francesca Sundsten was born in southern California, but moved to the Seattle area at the age of three. She has also lived for a year or morein England, Malaysia, Boston, and San Francisco. She began painting earnestly in her early 20's and enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute at the age of 24.

It was the mid 1980's when 'ugly art' duelled with conceptualism. Neither discipline seemed to provide a meaningful or pertinent direction for her. After a poverty stricken three months on the European continent and visits to over a hundred museums there, she ascertained that the most engaging and necessary pursuit was to follow her love of representational painting, which was very disapproved of in her undergraduate program. Returning to San Francisco, she spent the next two years defending this very unpopular direction. A show of Odd Nerdrum's work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1985 indicated that she wasn't entirely alone, and she promptly headed to Oslo the following summer for an informal apprenticeship with him there. She was eventually awarded her diploma. Two years of graduate school at Stanford University allowed her to continue her exploration of representational painting depicting intangible and inexplicable narratives. She continues this quest living with her husband and cat back in Seattle.

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EDUCATION

1990 MFA, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

1987 BFA, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010 Portraiture, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2008 The Usual Suspects, Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

2007 Phenomena, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York, NY

2006 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

2005 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

2004 Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL

2003 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

2002 Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA

Impediments and Perils, Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

2000 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

1999 Olga Dollar Gallery, Seattle, WA

1998 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

1997 Olga Dollar Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1996 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

1995 Olga Dollar Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1993 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

Olga Dollar Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1992 Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA

1991 Olga Dollar Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1990 Parker/Zanic Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Stanford University Art Gallery, Stanford, CA

1989 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery, San Francisco, CA